What is PPC Marketing and How Can It Help You?

Are you struggling, to generate sustainable buzz around your business online? 74% of marketing professionals said that PPC is a high driver for their business.

You may be thinking, I already know how to switch PPC ads on for my business. But, are you creating the perfect advertisements for your audience?

In this blog, we will dive into creating the perfect PPC ad whilst focussing on ‘what are PPC services?’

What Are PPC Services?

PPC or pay-per-click marketing services mean outsourcing an agency, or freelancer, or hiring an in-house team to manage your PPC advertising campaigns. Businesses may opt for the outsourcing method if they’re not trained in PPC, and don’t have the resources. 

PPC services include: 

Keyword Research

Keyword research is pivotal for effective digital marketing across not only PPC but SEO as well. PPC specialists can eliminate keywords and terms that have no value. They can target and optimise your ads for keywords with appropriate search volume and CTR making sure your ads only appear for relevant search terms. This can benefit your budget by ensuring you don’t waste money on irrelevant clicks.

Creating ad copy

Writing the perfect ads that rotate, and appear on search engines at the very top. PPC teams will ensure ad copy includes keywords for relevant search terms. They will also write engaging, persuasive copy that encourages online users to click on your ads. Good copy is important as 49% of people in a survey said they click on text ads.

Setting Up Tracking

Putting budget into PPC ads is pointless if appropriate tracking of performance isn’t set up.  This can mean analysing which keywords are creating the most opportunities and click-throughs, which ad copy works best and which landing pages convert more. This data can be used to further target your ad campaigns. Setting up tracking can be tricky so consider hiring a professional team to make it all that easier. 

Setting up Tags

A tag is something that fires on a website when clicked on. In simpler terms, when an action is taken on your landing page or website, a signal is sent via embedded code to track activity online. The most popular tagging system is Google Tag Manager where you can assign and embed code to specific web pages to send signals to Google Ads, Google Analytics, and third-party tags. This all aids your PPC strategy when it comes to tracking. 

• Creating Visual Ads

Some but not all PPC agencies will assist with creating visual display ads. These ads will appear on relevant third-party websites as banners (banner advertising is projected to grow by 7.07% from 2023), images and text ads. A PPC company’s role in creating display ads is to create optimised, effective PPC ads that showcase your products or services and persuades users to click. They should appear on relevant websites based on keywords.

Competitor Analysis

Conducting competitor analysis is vital as it can show you which keywords competitors are targeting and their spending. Use this information to identify gaps in your competitors’ online strategy. This can help you adjust yours accordingly. Your business’s strategy can then target the traffic your competitors are missing and optimise for increased results.

For more, check out our blog, how does PPC work and what is it?

Landing Page Design

PPC agencies can design landing pages which are web pages you send ad clickers to. These landing pages need to be designed with conversion in mind.

Picture this, you’ve managed to gain a click-through PPC advertisement on a search engine, and now the user has landed on your webpage that is messy, doesn’t provide the information promised and doesn’t lead anywhere towards a conversion, they’re going to bounce off. 

However, a well-thought-out, landing page with relevant information, offers a conversion rate of 9.7%. Ideally, you should be averaging a 10% conversion rate online. So hiring a professional to build quality landing pages is a no-brainer.

For more, check out this blog from ROAR on why you should build landing pages.

Tips For Choosing a PPC Agency

• Communicate
• Shop Around
• Read Reviews
• Schedule Calls
• Do Research

PPC professional? Great, but if you’re looking to bring in a team of experts to manage your PPC, download your free guide to hiring a PPC agency here. 

Steps To Creating The Perfect Ad 

Research The Audience

Having great PPC ads is nothing without having an audience to target them. A PPC agency will research your audience. This includes their search behaviours online and analysing which keywords and search terms attract them the most. You may have some data on your audience that could help here so be sure to share it!

Choose Ad Type and Placement

You may have been unaware, but text ads and display ads have different functionalities and are displayed in different places online. Display ads normally come as images, videos, text, flash ads or audio advertisements. They usually link to an online store for purchases or a company’s website.

They usually appear on third-party websites for relevant terms. Text ads are pieces of text that normally appear on search engine results pages (SERPs). These can lead to landing pages or a page of a website. 

Establish The  budget

With PPC, you will pay a small fee each and every time your ad is clicked on. Having a set budget means ads can be set to run without overspending daily or monthly, but CPC (cost per click) must be considered. At the end of the day, with PPC you get out what you put into it. 

Finalise The Message

This is important to any ad copywriter and something to work with. It should be decided early on which product or service needs to be pushed. This will mean that the ads are better tailored and more specific to pushing particular things.

Example: If a business wants to push a skincare line, it should let the PPC agency know. Then they will conduct keyword research to create effective, skincare-focused ad copy. 

Set Up Tracking and Analytics

Tracking and analytics help you keep on top of your PPC campaign performance in line with your goals. Tracking and analytics should be ready to go as soon as the ads are pushed live. This is vital in order to not miss any data on how the ads are running.

Data from 2 weeks into a month-long PPC campaign is pointless and redundant. It’s also crucial to set up goals in software like Google Analytics, to see how well your ads perform in this regard. 

Set The Ads Live

The big one! Set the ads live, it’s now ready to put your ads into the world, and hopefully see some increase in traffic and conversions.

Evaluate The Ads

Evaluate the ads daily to ensure there is no overspending and to see how many leads are gained each day. 

Fact: Google Ads will allow for an overspend of up to 2 times the clicks in a day than your average daily budget. 

Although, you can go through the data for a full campaign at the end, or at the end of a month looking at it each day allows you to keep up with how things are performing. This can also make it easier to spot anything that is going drastically wrong, god forbid. 

Does your business need online advertising? Are you not sure where to start? Contact ROAR today to create the ultimate buzz around your business with PPC!